Blessed...: Second step of Summer Scheduling

I love lists, my kids love lists. We all need a schedule. My kids need to know ahead of time what is expected and when. It keeps peace in my house.

We have had schedule outline almost 3 years now. We change things up as kid's needs change and responsibilities change.

Each child gets up, gets dressed, makes their bed and cleans up their room.

They go to the barn and each child has certain animals they care for. Elizabeth always takes Bubbie with her. He will only listen to her and the boys get annoyed at him. ;)

Fayth works better close to me and she is more of a girly girl, so she helps me in the house. Her morning job is to vacuum the living room and help me with Nesiah's morning care.

Each morning one kiddo makes breakfast. I used to be the cook of all meals, however I received to many complaints. So now each child gets to cook what THEY want for breakfast. Which has really really cut down on the complaining. The one's who want scambled eggs, get scrambled eggs on their morning. The one's who like dippy eggs, get dippy eggs on their morning. They do not like when other's complain about their meals, so they stop their own complaining. A win, win situation. I do cook breakfast on Sundays and Fridays.

After each meal, each kid has a special job. They rotate jobs every day. One person cleans the table and counters. Another one washes dishes. Another one dries dishes and the last one sweeps the floor. they rotate every day so it keeps jobs from getting monotonous.

Currently I sort and wash all clothing. But the big kids fold and put away their own laundry. I take care of mine and the littles.

They love the story of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Mowing the lawn. We live on 3 acres but most of it is pastures. So we have a small yard which we mow with a walk behind mower. The yard is divided into 3 pieces, each of the 3 older ones mows one area. They rotate weekly. We have them numbered 1-2-3. This has really worked well.

The boys are responsible for keeping the vehicles clean and the girls and I work on the keeping the house clean. Everyone has assigned jobs. If I need them to do my job or some awful/big job, they get paid. But they do not get an allowance or pay for regular activities.

We try to make sure that we get together with friends atleast once a week, the boys play with neighborhood boys more often. We are not putting up our pool this summer because we have a very intelligent, very active, very mischievous 2 yr old that scares the life off me quite frequently. So we hope to play at the local creeks. I bought some fun tubes etc.. plus the boy's friend owns a pool and they are planning on allowing us to swim atleast weekly.

We do lots of spontaneous fun. I like my schedule. I like routine. But I love last minute get togethers with friends and fun roadtrips.

We are still learning to work with Bubbie who is allergic to everything, including the air in the summer! So I foresee some long days of monopoly and dice.I am learning to just be. To just hang out with my kids. They will soon be grown up and then I can enjoy peace and quite.

Today for example: We got up late and got a slow start. While the kids did their chores, I washed up a huge stack of dishes from yesterday. We then made pancakes for breakfast and just hung out eating for over an hour. We watched Tony Evans on the computer then Bubbie and I napped. While the big kids played with the Polly Pockets. We had a very late, find your own lunch. Now the kids are playing with a new game I purchased while I waste time blogging. Nesiah just hangs out with us. She is happy just being in the middle of everything. This... this is the perfect kinda day.

Yes, we have behaviors, no we are not perfect. But if anyone feels the need to ruin the peace and calm, they will get send to their room for a long nap. This has taken years and years of training...